White House Warns Of Veto Of Homeland Security Bill

July 26, 2002|By David Firestone The New York Times

WASHINGTON — The White House on Thursday threatened for the first time to veto the bill creating a Homeland Security Department as approved by a Senate committee, widening an ideological battle that could engulf a vast new anti-terrorism agency once embraced by both parties.

Late Thursday, the House opened debate on a GOP-drafted homeland security bill that is mostly to President Bush's liking. Legislators, however, faced votes on several controversial amendments. House leaders aimed to win passage of their bill today.

Ari Fleischer, the White House spokesman, said that Democrats had stripped the administration of the management flexibility necessary to run the department, making it harder to reward good employees or punish poor performers.

But Democrats, who call "flexibility" a code word for erosion of workers' rights, said they could not believe that a disagreement over personnel and union issues would truly drive the president to veto a department he proposed last month.

"The president remains hopeful and optimistic that these provisions can be fixed without a veto," Fleischer said. "But he does feel strongly about it. He is prepared to, he will receive a recommendation from his advisers to veto this if the president's concerns are not addressed."

The identical questions over whether many of the 170,000 employees of the new department would have civil service protections dominated the debate in the House, which began considering a domestic security bill that sharply differs with the Senate version on the personnel issues most important to the administration.

The swirl of competing proposals Thursday deepened the sense that a Homeland Security Department, once seen as Washington's consensus response to the terrorist threat, had become hostage to the ideological goals of the two sides. The parties were at odds not on the larger issues of the huge government reorganization, such as which agencies would be transferred, but rather on smaller details of personnel management and spending authority, including how easily a laggard employee could be fired or how closely Congress would control the department's spending.

Speaking aboard Air Force One, Fleischer said that if the administration did not receive the flexibility it seeks to promote and fire Homeland Security Department employees, Bush's advisers would recommend a veto of the entire department. Although he stopped short of saying that Bush would veto it, he made it clear the president wanted to issue a strong warning to Senate Democrats.

But Sen. Joseph Lieberman of Connecticut, the principal architect of the Senate bill passed by his Governmental Affairs Committee on Thursday, said he could not believe Bush would veto the department over personnel issues.

"Our bill gives the president 90 percent of what he asked for," Lieberman said. "I hope this veto threat is a tactic to encourage continued negotiation." He noted that Bush had never vetoed any bill passed by Congress and doubted that the measure creating the department would be the first.